It’s almost year-end and it’s time to set your company’s sights on the new year. Large companies have been working on next year’s budget since August but mid-size and smaller companies are usually focused on finishing the current year with a bang. Companies of all sizes need to make strategic plans for the new year. Now is the time to plan a leadership retreat or half-day planning session to envision a fantastic new year for your organization.

Brio Leadership has helped a multitude of companies and large departments make plans for their new year. We want to share five secrets with you about the process.

Secret #1: If you don’t plan to plan, you will fail to plan. With your leadership team, take out your calendars right now and find a date in November, December or January when you can spend quality, uninterrupted time to envision your dreams and goals for the new year. It’s best to spend a day together to do some team building and planning together.

Secret #2: Involve as many people as possible in the planning. Good change management models always recommend widespread involvement in planning and executing changes. Without that, there is no buy-in to the plans made. Some companies start the planning exercise with executive teams to establish over-arching goals and then repeat the sessions in each department to determine more granular objectives to help meet the corporate goals.

Secret #3: Spend time appreciating the good things that you accomplished this year. After a fun team- building exercise or a meal together, ask the group to think of the five things they achieved this year, either individually or as a company, they are most proud of. Ask each person to list the reasons each accomplishment went so well; in other words, what did we do that made that so successful? Then discuss how the organization could continue to use those success elements to achieve even more next year.

Secret #4: Revisit your values, purpose statement and 10-year vision. Savvy leaders will take this opportunity to remind their teams of the organization’s higher purpose, the values they hold dear and the future vision of what the organization can become. As Stephen Covey taught us in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, we “Begin with the end in mind.” Values, purpose and vision are the end goals of a highly effective organization.

Secret #5: Consider inviting an outside facilitator to lead the planning. Some companies like to bring in an expert with “new eyes”, at least every other year, to help guide the discussion, question your assumptions and help you think of things that wouldn’t be conceivable otherwise. An outside facilitator might also introduce you to new disciplines and structures to help revive your strategic goals and plans. Brio Leadership would be glad to talk to you about facilitating your year-end planning session.

Gender diversity in the workplace is not just a feel-good issue for women; it’s a financial imperative for companies. Studies show that gender diversity, especially in the top ranks, positively affects financial outcomes of an organization. McKinsey & Company, the global consultancy, and Lean In, a non-profit dedicated to women’s parity in the workplace, recently published their latest research report on gender diversity called Women in the Workplace 2018. The results of this year’s research show women are vastly underrepresented at every level of the organization and that their percentages have not increased over the past four years. Indeed, progress towards gender diversity has stalled.

Furthermore, this study states that women are doing their part to “lean in”: they are getting college degrees at higher rates than men, they ask for raises and promotions, and they stay in the workforce at the same rate as men.

It is in the best interest of all organizations to do more to fix this problem. The report lists six actions companies can take to address gender equality, including setting goals for hiring and promoting women and holding all executives accountable to the goals. One of the six recommended actions stood out to me, which was the prescription to “Foster an inclusive and respectful culture.” This upholds Brio Leadership’s conviction that company culture, which is made up of the collective values, beliefs and behavioral standards, is the foundation of and necessary precursor to gender inclusivity.This report underscored the need for all employees to feel safe in an “inclusive, supportive and civil culture” (p. 50). Here are some ways companies can ensure such a culture:

Clearly communicate that sexual harassment is not tolerated

Ensure that sexual harassment complaints are taken seriously and dealt with fairly

Develop clear descriptions of acceptable behavior and the consequences of not upholding those standards of conduct

Hold periodic refreshers on acceptable behaviors so it is top of mind for all.

Encourage managers to intervene early and quickly when they observe actions that do not align with the behavioral standards; for example, by calling out and stopping disrespectful actions or derogatory comments when they happen.

Educate employees, especially managers, on gender bias and how to detect it in themselves and others

Inspect and revise team norms that might disadvantage women, such as planning team outings or socializations after hours. Parents of both genders may find these norms impinge on their family responsibilities, such as after-school activities or picking up children from daycare.

The case study used to illustrate best practices in the area of setting cultural norms highlights how Mozilla created an inclusive culture. The company wanted to understand why women were leaving the company at rates much higher than men, so they convened a series of women’s focus groups to seek feedback and ideas. They learned that women wanted a clearer description of what constituted acceptable behavior and what groups (ie: races, gender and disabilities) were especially protected under the guidelines.

As a result of the company’s investigation, Mozilla revised their code of conduct to include specific examples of acceptable and non-acceptable behaviors and the consequences of non-compliance with the code. The results of these actions were a positive change in employee engagement scores and an equalization of attrition rates among both genders. You can see the Mozilla code of conduct here.

Organizational Culture is the Foundation for Gender Diversity

Women in the Workplace 2018 is an important read for anyone concerned about gender diversity, organizational productivity and profitability. Companies must start with the report’s cultural prescriptions to build a safe, inclusive &amp; civil environment for all people to do their best work.

The Queen of Hearts in Louis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland commanded “Off with her head!” at the slightest offense. Although this fictional story was written over 100 years ago, there are lessons from this story that can be applied to 21 st century work culture. Many inexperienced or uninformed leaders in today’s dynamic workplace may inadvertently “kill” the whole team when only one person makes a mistake.

I was reminded of this ill-advised practice by a colleague of mine, a millennial who is still early in his career. He told me that his boss sent out an email to the whole team with a correction, a directive that asked for different behavior. The boss said that he’d heard complaints and wanted them all to pay better attention to their customers.

Trouble is, this colleague of mine was already doing just that.

The boss acted the best he knew how – he sent out an email to all eleven of his team members. But the result of his action was an unintended consequence of his inability to address the one or two team members who were not paying proper attention to customers.

My colleague reported feeling “afraid, anxious and unfairly accused.” He responded with an email that apologized for any possible infraction on his part and asked the boss to give him direct feedback if he wasn’t performing to expectations.​This is a common mistake of inexperienced or uncoached managers: this manager “killed” the whole team indiscriminately instead of dealing with specific employees. He used a blanket or indirect correction when a direct and specific correction would have been much more impactful. More impactful, but far scarier for the manager.

Managers who are truly leaders will gather their courage and deal directly with team members who are not performing to their expectations. If they don’t mete out corrections directly, they risk losing the trust of the whole team, instilling a climate of fear, and not fixing the problem. Performance suffers. When everyone on the team is blamed, no one is responsible.

Instead, what the manager should have done is meet with the one or two team members who were not meeting his expectations. He should explain the complaints he’s received, explain the consequences of poor performance, and ask the team member for their viewpoint. In addition, he should be generous with affirmations of good performance and share any compliments from customers.​Beware of the blanket or indirect correction. It does not accomplish your goal of improvingperformance.

​In our increasingly secular world, religious participation is on the decline overall. However, at the same time in the United States, there are many religious institutions that are in fact thriving and growing. What do these organizations do to create a cohesive community of thousands and excite their congregations in these times of religious decay? I was pondering this at a recent conference on organizational culture, where I began listing some traditions churches and other religious communities use to draw people together and create positive organizational cultures. I thought of practices like community worship, commitment to high ideals, prayer, small group meetings, potluck dinners, receiving an offering and community service or mission work. While not all religious practices are bestapplied to a diverse and inclusive workplace, there are many ideas that a company can re-purpose from religious organizations to create a better team culture. Let’s examine them separately:

1. Purpose higher than oneself​Religious institutions are dedicated to the idea of serving a deity or purpose that is larger than the individual. This ideal promises a better life, both now and in the future. All humans wish to belong to some entity that has a higher purpose to ennoble the work that we do together. Although it is not a perfect comparison, it is vitally important for non-religious organizations to identify the unique contribution they make to improving our world. Without it, people lose sight of the big picture. No one wants to come to work to make money for the shareholders.

Take-aways: If you haven’t already done so, schedule an offsite or large group meeting tocreate an inspiring purpose statement for your group. If you need help leading this process, Brio Leadership is highly skilled in planning and facilitating purpose creation workshops to design purpose statements that capture the essence of your organization’s soul.

2. Shared Organizational Beliefs

It is not enough to identify only the core values of the organization. What is needed is for each new team member to discover their own core values and map them to the values of the organization. Brio Leadership’s white paper on core values includes an exercise to map personal to organizational values. Every manager should talk to their team members about how the workplace culture is helping them uphold their personal values.

Take-aways: if you haven’t already, identify your organization’s values and ask each manager to meet with their team members to map personal values to the company values. Brio Leadership offers a white paper to help identity your team members’ values and identify the core values of the collective.

3. Worship

Human beings are pack animals and need to feel belongingness in a larger group. This, along with reminders of shared beliefs and higher purpose, are the reasons for weekly services at a place of worship. This concept can be repurposed for the workplace by establishing a cadence of regular meetings at the team, department and all-company levels. Meeting rituals can be established, such as check-ins and check-outs for smaller meetings or serving food for any size.

I had the privilege of working with Scott Stegner, a Senior Vice President at Schneider Electric, who held quarterly “cookie chats” or updates on the state of the business with his employees, who were scattered around the world. He insisted that a coordinator in each office serve cookies to his employees during the webinar in which he would review progress towards goals, outstanding issues and provide public recognition of team members achievements. This ritual was highly effective in drawing the worldwide team together and reminding people of their shared aspirations and achievements.

Take-aways: Establish a schedule of regularly-held meetings that include some ritualized,always-repeated elements such as check-ins/check-outs or served food.

4. Offering

Religious organizations “pass the plate” at each worship service to support the work of thechurch. A secular organization does not ask employees to fund the company but a growing number of companies seek offerings from their employees to finance hardship funds for other employees. Funds are managed by a committee of employees who review and make grants to team members in times of need. I told a story of Stericycle’s generosity to their Houston-area team members in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in my last blog article. Like Stericycle, a company may match employee donations to the fund. Team members never forgot when their company and co-workers reach out with compassion and aid when a tragedy strikes. Those workers are more loyal and tend to expend more discretionary effort on the job than otherwise.

Take-aways: Create an employee hardship fund that is jointly financed by employee donations that are matched by the company. Appoint a cross-functional team to award grants to employees in need. Be generous in assisting employees struck by hardship, and your kindness will be returned in the form of increased discretionary effort by all employees.

5. Social Justice/community service

Religious congregations often live their values by serving those in need outside of theircommunity and may offer several ways for congregants to volunteer. Likewise, manycompanies today are offering ways for employees to donate time to non-profits that are making a difference in their communities. Brio Leadership, my company, is a member of and participates in CFT4Business’ annual Freedom Day of community service. Each September 11, we celebrate the first responders and those that died in the attacks on NYC and the Pentagon by donating a day of service to non-profits in the Dallas area. This year, we are working for Helping Us Help Herself, a non-profit that helps teenage girls recognize and value their self-worth.

Take-aways: Set up a VTO (volunteering time off) policy for your company. Allow each team member eight hours per quarter to volunteer for the charity of their choice or invite your entire team to join you in a day of community service.

6. Small/affinity/support group meetings

Most religious organizations recognize the need to create belongingness within the largercommunity by offering small group programs. Often, religious small groups are based on affinity (like a shared hobby), geography or support needs (like an AA group). Why can’t a company do the same? After all, the Gallup Q12 engagement survey asks, “Do you have a best friend at work?”, indicating the importance of social support at work.

In a previous blog post, I wrote about Veterans United, a company that sponsors over 60 small groups and allows them to meet on company time. In fact, the CEO has declared that he would like every employee to join a small group.

Take-aways: Publicly encourage small groups to organically spring up and meet monthly during the work day. Affinity groups could form around shared interests such as knitting, skydiving, running, learning a new language, etc. Support groups might spring up around subjects such as new parents, single dads/moms, caretakers of older parents. Publish a list of groups available and how to join them.

7. Potluck and communal meals

In researching my recent master’s thesis, I was intrigued by studies of the effect that sharing a meal has on a team. Commensality is the academic term for eating together around a table with a group of people. It also has been shown to break down barriers and bond people together. In addition, food served by a company becomes a symbol of the nurturance and care of team members by management, and, once eaten, is embodied in that person. What a great way to knit together a team!

Take-aways: Create rituals around shared meals, such as monthly potlucks or quarterly cookie chats. Serve some food that is provided by the company to symbolize caring toward team members. Consider a potluck to highlight the culinary traditions of each participant’s heritage.

Churches and religious communities have many practices that build unity and create a cohesive organizational culture. Leaders can consider re-purposing many of these practices to build their own vibrant company cultures!

Social support is the connection that workers feel with their co-workers, managers and theorganization itself. Pfeffer’s research shows that when workers feel a high degree of belongingness, they perform better emotionally and cognitively. High levels of social support contribute to better physical and mental health along with providing protection against the negative effects of stressful experiences. Furthermore, the Gallup Q12 Employee Engagement survey asks participants if they have a best friend at work, which points out the importance of social connections to workplace engagement.

What executives and leaders can do to encourage social support

Pfeffer’s first recommendation is to discontinue the “rank and yank” method of conductingperformance evaluations, in which employees are ranked according to their perceived contributions, and the bottom 10% is terminated. Popularized by Jack Welch at GE, this management practice contributes to intense competition among team members, a fear-based atmosphere, high stress levels and lower overall performance. Instead, Pfeffer advocates for a more humane system of providing continual performance feedback based on mutually-agreed on goals and objectives that will improve the culture and physical health of an organization.

Additionally, organizations can provide support to team members having difficulties, as in providing services in the wake of a natural disaster. Stericycle’s Culture VP Lara Morrow tells of efforts she encouraged at her company to support workers in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in September 2017. The company collected and distributed donations of supplies, food and clothing for their employees affected by the disaster. The company even matched employee donations to the hardship fund, raising over $100,000 in just a few days. This kind of social support endears workers to their employer, increasing their loyalty to the company and their tendency to expend discretionary effort on the job. Of course, this action also contributes positively to a company’s bottom line results.

Leaders can also create a culture of community in which team members develop strong friendships with each other. A very good example of how to encourage friendships at work is the small group program at Veteran’s United, a company specializing in the VA Home Loan Benefit. The company has encouraged the flourishing of over 60 small groups that meet on company time and focus on areas of interest to the participants. The focus of these small groups at VU range drastically from a men’s group who gather to talk about their emotions to parent support groups to even a conspiracy theory group. The CEO has communicated his desire that every team member join a small group and incentivized his mandate by giving each participant an additional 8 hours of PTO (paid time off) peryear.

Conclusive evidence that workplace culture is shaped by management practices

Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book provides ample evidence to convince even a skeptic that many un-enlightened management practices produce detrimental effects on employee health, well-being, productivity, and commitment to expending discretionary effort on the job. Although Pfeffer could expend more discretionary effort in connecting these effects to poor organizational performance, there is enough proof in the book to make it clear that leaders must eliminate these four toxic workplace practices:

We continue our series of the shocking revelations found in Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance – and What We Can Do About It, by Jeffrey Pfeffer. In this book, Professor Pfeffer establishes that there is a connection between toxic workplace practices, employee health, and organizational performance. Part one of this blog series on this book focuses primarily on Pfeffer’s most damning claim, which is that toxic workplace practices are more harmful to an employee’s health than exposure to second-hand smoke. Pfeffer effectively makes the claim that modern workplace stress can literally kill you. In Part Two of our book review, we’ll discuss two of the ten dangerous workplace practices identified in the book.

Those two practices are #6: Work/Family conflicts and #7: Low job control.

Again, the picture is not a pretty one.

Work/Family conflict

Pfeffer defines work/family conflicts as two separate problems: 1) when family demands interfere with work productivity and 2) when work demands interfere with family commitments. He tells a story of a worker whose manager called at her father’s funeral and told her to cut short her trip so she could return to fix a client’s problem. To add insult to injury, when the worker returned to work the next day, she discovered that the issue had been resolved without her. This is an instance of work demands impinging on family commitments.

Not surprisingly, work/family conflicts produce negative physical and mental health effects on workers. These health concerns include higher levels of depression, poor health implications and increased alcohol consumption. In turn, employers must deal with employees who do not expend discretionary effort on the job, higher absenteeism during the average workday and rising healthcare costs that the company must cover.

Low job control

Pfeffer defines low job control as an employee’s lack of discretion of when, how and what work to do, and a low amount of decision-making authority. Low job control results in infantilization of employees and deleterious health consequences. In a famous series of investigations called the Whitehall Studies, scientists found that British Civil Service workers at the lowest level of the hierarchy experienced 50% more cardiovascular disease than those at the highest ranks of the organization.

Why is low job control so common in our workplace? One reason for this is the proliferation of workplace technology that automates many tasks and provides a manager more visibility into a worker’s progress. Both trends enable higher level employees to engage in micromanaging. Another reason for this is that organizations tend to promote workers with exceptional technical skills and fail to train them in managerial and leadership skills. We have a long workplace history of command-and-control management practices that are outdated in the 21 st century information economy. Let’s face it, commanding leadership styles have never been effective in building trust, collaboration and creativity in teams. But commanding styles may be the only style a new manager has been exposed to, making training on other leadership styles a requirement. Organizational cultures, which are built up over years and perpetuated by outdated management practices, take a long time to change.

To show how a company can combat low job control, Pfeffer tells the story of a call center at Collective Health, a health benefits organization. The company recruited from the best schools, trained employees about all aspects of the business, rotated the employees through different responsibilities in the call center, and empowered them to convene teams of co-workers outside of the call center to resolve customer issues. Dr. Andrew Halpert, senior director of clinical solutions, admits that the cost of these high-paid professionals might look high on the P&amp;L, but it pays off in terms of customer satisfaction, time to resolve issues and employee retention. Call centers are typically the information economy’s equivalent of a sweat shop, so to read about an organization that is providing high job control to their call center employees is encouraging.

What executives and leaders can do about work/family conflict and low job control

Sadly, Pfeffer is not optimistic about wholesale changes in either increased federal mandates or employer practices around work/family conflict. Instead, he encourages workers to set boundaries around time spent working so they do not neglect their families, ultimately leaving jobs that are unfriendly to their need to balance work and family commitments.

Regarding job control, organizations must expand their criteria for promotions from simply technical skills to consideration of the person’s interpersonal potential. Importantly, companies must provide both training and coaching of their managers at all stages in their career, but especially when an employee is promoted for the first time into management. The leadership proficiencies all managers need are 1) coaching abilities, so their team members become independent problem solvers, and 2) effective delegation skills, so they can increase worker’s level of autonomy.

Next week, we will complete this book review by examining the importance of social support on the job.

In his shocking book, Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance – and What We Can Do About It, author Jeffrey Pfeffer recounts the research he and colleagues have done to examine the management practices that establish the expectation that employees must work themselves to death – literally – to advance their careers. Pfeffer, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, firmly establishes the connection between dysfunctional workplace practices and both employee health and organizational performance. It isn’t a pretty picture.

More toxic than secondhand smoke exposure​One of Pfeffer’s conclusions is that many workplace practices are more toxic than exposure to secondhand smoke. Although this may seem like an outlandish assertion, the author presents his case convincingly using bar graphs on pages 46-47. In all categories of health effect, secondhand smoke exposure is at the bottom or middle of the rankings, showing that work stressors pose significant health risks for employees and bottom line risks for employers. Although the book pays more attention to the adverse consequences for the employee, the author also points out the accompanying costs to the employer of toxic workplace practices, which include: high attrition, low productivity and engagement, high workers compensation costs, high health care costs and high absenteeism (due to sick leave).

He urges workers not to die for a paycheck and recommends that these employees leave these jobs that make you sick. In addition, he recommends many practices that an employer can implement to offset these risks. He also argues for more extensive government regulation, especially in the US, to provide a level playing field for all employees. His argument is that we regulate environmental pollution; therefore, our government should also regulate “social pollution” (p 140), which is the aggregate of toxic workplace practices.

Although I found the book to be poorly organized and the author apt to going off on tangents, I highly recommend Chapters 1, 2, 4 and 6 to leaders who wish to examine their workplace to ensure it is a life-enhancing environment. These chapters provide an overview and introduction to the research (chapters 1 and 2), explore the negative effects of long hours and work-family conflict (chapter 5) and the dangers of low job control and too little social support in the workplace (chapter 6). This review will also focus on these aspects of the book.

Pfeffer goes on to identify ten workplace practices that adversely affect human health and longevity (p.43). Rather than listing all at this point, we will look at the four practices that leaders today have the most control over:

#4: Working long hours

#6: Work/Family conflicts

#7: Low job control

#9: Providing too little social support

We’ll summarize each issue, explore its implications and find out what to do to eliminate the problem. Because this is such an important topic, we will serialize the book review into three parts.

Toxic Workplace Practice #4: Working long hours in the week

In his chapter on the negative effects of long work hours, Pfeffer opens with the story of a Japanese worker who died of a heart attack at his desk. He had been stressed by working 75 hours a week, in addition to commuting to work four hours a day. He had worked 40 days straight when he died. Research into this subject proves that there is indeed deleterious effect of long work hours. For example, a study of California workers found those that work more than 48 hours per week had increased chances for coronary heart disease. More specifically, another study found that people who work 10 hours a day over an extended period were 45% more likely to have suffered a heart attack.

Ironically, Pfeffer states that worker’s “productivity is highest when people spend fewer hours working” (p 137). In the industrial age, long hours may have equated to higher production, but in the information age in which creativity, problem-solving and team work are most needed, these attributes diminish when employees work long hours. It is proven that team members are more innovative, thoughtful and productive when they have had a good night’s sleep and spent time with their families. Productivity and job performance decreases with overtime work but increases when work hours are reduced (p 137-138). Companies are better served by having employees who don’t over work.

What executives and leaders can do

Pfeffer states that “Work time is the result of managerial decisions and discretion” (p. 125). Leaders have the power to set an example of work/life balance and must reject the assumption that hours worked indicates an employee’s loyalty to the company. Leaders can adopt the following recommendations:

Ban the practice of managers expecting their workers to be always available by restricting off-hour communications (emails, texts, phone calls) to emergency situations only. Leaders must walk this talk by refraining from sending emails or other communications after business hours, on weekends or holidays. Examples of companies that have successfully implemented this policy are Google in Dublin, Patagonia and Zillow (p. 126).

Insist that your team members take all their vacation and holiday time. When they do so,expect them to disconnect from email, phone and texts.

Do not equate loyalty to the company to an employee’s amount of time in the office, ostensibly spent working. (Pfeffer tells horror stories of workers who schedule emails to be delivered after hours or leave on their desk lights at night, to falsely imply they are working long hours.) Reward results rather than face time. By the way, rewarding those who work the most hours results in fewer promotions for women, who typically have more responsibilities at home than men and are unable to log long hours at the office.

Offer flexible working hours and telecommuting options for workers who desire it. The absence of a commute often significantly reduces stress and time spent away from home.

Offer help with family care-giving responsibilities, such as more time for family leave, assistance with family member’s care (both children and elders).

Encourage team members to get enough sleep. Recent research establishes that most people need at least seven hours a night to perform at their best. This means that leaders cannot brag about how little sleep they get or how long they work.​

]]>Mon, 16 Jul 2018 21:38:10 GMThttp://www.brioleadership.com/blog/company-culture-predicts-customer-loyaltyRecently I was made to wait two weeks to get an important prescription filled. Two weeks! And I live in a first-world country and have decent health insurance. After a week of receiving pre-recorded apology updates from the pharmacy, I called both the doctor’s office and the pharmacy, and discovered the doctor’s office hadn’t received any of the faxed pre-authorization requests the pharmacy was sending every morning. Knowing that, I asked the pharmacist to directly call the doctor’s office and ensure they completed the authorization form for insurance. I finally got the medication and felt better within a day,but now I am looking for another doctor because of this debacle!

Poor customer service is always a reflection of a negative culture. The root cause of my unfortunate experience was the poor organizational culture at my doctor’s office, reflected in their unresponsive administrative personnel and poor customer service processes. Here is the formula:

To say it succinctly, employees treat customers in a manner consistent with how they are treated. If management yells at employees, they are in turn likely to be surly with customers. If management does not give the employees the tools, empowerment or training to serve the customer well, the customer will suffer. And when the customer suffers, so does loyalty and satisfaction and that negatively impacts customer retention, which negatively affects profitability. It’s a vicious cycle.

The link between customer service and company culture

There are many studies proving the link between company culture, customer satisfaction and profitability, including:

A Washington State University study finds that employee satisfaction is linked to customer satisfaction, which is linked to financial performance.

Four things you can do to ensure a positive customer service experience

As a leader in your organization, what can you do to ensure that your culture enables good customer service? Here are some recommendations:1. Leaders’ behaviors visibly uphold the organization’s core values and purpose.

Leaders must be visible in their efforts to model the core values of their organizations. Leaders, get out of your offices and talk to your employees. Know their names. Say good morning to them. Ask them about issues with customers. Ask for stories about great service.

If outstanding customer service is one of your core values, do you talk to customers yourself?Do you observe or visit with customer-facing employees as they do their jobs? Do you provide the training, tools and resources needed to provide great customer service?

2. Leaders care about their team members.

A colleague of mine tells a story of how she was treated while employed at EDS (which was acquired by Hewlett Packard in 2012). She developed a serious medical condition that required her to be hospitalized for nine months. Laying in a hospital bed, worried about how she was going to support her family and pay for her illness, she received a personal phone call from Ross Perot, the CEO of EDS, who told her that the company would continue her salary and cover all her medical expenses. Imagine her stress relief, knowing that the CEO of her large company had her back!

3. Leaders appreciate and recognize the achievements of their customer service professionals. When I was a consultant to customer support call centers, I always asked managers if they had a budget for recognition, appreciation and team building. If not, I would advocate for this with their executives. Too many times, customer service employees are at the bottom of the organizational hierarchy and receive no thanks for their vital contribution to the business. The best customer service organizations ensure they have the best recognition programs to appreciate team members who provide excellent service.

It is crazy that in so many companies, the customer-facing personnel are the lowest paid workers. There are reasonable business explanations for this, but for heaven’s sake, pay your customer service people at market and make the service environment a fun one. One call center manager creates a monthly event – a party, a game or competition – for his staff. He empowers a Jubilee Team to plan fun events around the season of the year – Halloween, baseball, Valentines Day, back-to-school, etc. Through this manager, the company shows its appreciation for the staff.

4. Leaders communicate the strategic importance of customer service and its contribution to the profitability of the company.

One of the most important tasks of leaders is communication, especially in the areas of strategy and culture. As a leader, are you:

Speaking to your team members about the importance of customer service?

Explaining the company’s strategy and the importance of customer satisfaction/loyalty?

Showing employees how their efforts are advancing the company’s overall goals?

Demonstrating to employees the higher purpose of the company, which has to be more than just making money?

To make the impact you need, a leader must be consistent in communicating these messages. Take advantage of all methods to do so: personal conversations, team meetings, all-hands meetings, videos and social media.

Paul Spiegelman, CEO of Beryl Health before it was acquired by Stericycle, told me (personal conversation, 2015) that leaders cannot be shy. He said, “If you want to be a leader, you have to get out of your office. I am a certified introvert and don’t like to be the center of attention, but we know the impact we can make.”2

Customer Service is impacted by culture

Now you know that when you receive poor customer service, it’s not the employee’s fault. Rather, the responsibility lies within the culture that the leaders have created in the organization. Take pity on the poor service provider, give them empathy and vow to take your business elsewhere!

All professional women, and the men they work with, need to read a very timely and informative book called How Women Rise by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith[1]. I was so excited to discover this book that I read it in one sitting. It is an important contribution to the understanding of how women can adapt their behaviors to get ahead in a male dominated workplace.​Authors Helgesen and Goldsmith are a star-studded partnership. Since publishing her best-seller The Female Advantage in 1990, Helgesen has been a sought-after leadership coach, author and speaker. Goldsmith is known as “the world’s preeminent executive coach” and is the author of several New York Times bestsellers, starting with What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. These two heavy-weight authorities have great advice for women that’s based on their decades-long experience observing and coaching both women and men.

What this book does not address are the structural and systemic reasons that cause women to struggle to advance their careers. Some of these workplace truths include unconscious bias in hiring/promotions and personnel practices that assume you don’t have a family life. The authors acknowledge the existence of these constraints on page 120:

“workplace structures and expectations created with men in mind continue to frustrate many women’s talents and ambitions”.

Instead, the book focuses on the behaviors that typically hold women back and sheds light on what they can do differently. In that way, the book is highly optimistic and empowers women to deal with what they can control, which is their own behaviors.

The authors describe twelve habits that hold women back. My one criticism of the book is that twelve habits is too many. The human brain can’t retain that many items in working memory. Interestingly, the authors side-handedly admit that twelve might be overwhelming by creating “habit clusters” that group similar habits together, suggesting that, for instance:

“if you have a problem with Habit 1, Reluctance to Claim Your Achievements, you probably also struggle with Habit 2, Expecting Other to Spontaneously Notice and Reward Your Contributions” (p 190-191).

Although I wish the authors had simplified things, perhaps by reducing the habits from twelve to a handful that are easier to remember, that might have created a less compelling book or at least, a slimmer and less imposing one.

In addition to the above-mentioned Habits #1 and #2, some other habits that women can kick are:

“Habit 3: Overvaluing Expertise”, meaning that women tend to wait until they have 110% of the expertise needed to apply for a promotion or plum job.

“Habit 7: The Perfection Trap”, which describes the hope for rewards if you get everything perfectly correct.

“Habit 4: Building Rather Than Leveraging Relationships” in which women tend to build relationships just to have friends rather than using friendships to trade favors.

The most memorable story told in this book was about the woman who coordinated, with a male co-leader, a high-profile charity event. It was a huge success. Afterwards, the local paper interviewed her separately from her co-leader. She gave all the credit to her co-leader, whereas he took all the credit himself, making her look like a helper rather than a strong leader. The woman was angry and felt betrayed. In a workshop that Helgesen conducted, the woman accused her co-leader of being self-centered because he did not share the spotlight with her. When Helgesen interviewed the male partner about his actions, he noted that it never occurred to him that it was his job to promote his female co-leader. That was her job, and didn’t she know how the game works? This illustrates how men and women have the tendency to operate under different implicit rules. Men just assume that it’s OK to brag about your accomplishments, while women have been taught they shouldn’t brag.

In a nutshell, this book encourages women to adopt the following behaviors:

Toot your own horn by publicizing, in a gracious but firm manner, your own accomplishments. Highlight your contributions before acknowledging your team members’ achievements.

Tell everyone you can about your ambition in a clear fashion. If you want to be CEO, tell your boss and ask for her/his help to achieve the dream.

Think big and think strategically, both about the business and your career. Don’t get derailed in perfecting minutiae.

Instead of getting caught doing detail work, say no to inconsequential projects and ask instead for visible, high impact ones.

“Speak your truth with clarity, intention and force” (p 191). This will help you avoid ambiguity or conditional expressions such as “I believe that...” or “Doesn’t everyone agree that…”

Accept less-than-perfect performance from yourself. Sometimes winging it a little helps you come across as authentic and real.

My advice on how to start practicing new behaviors is to follow a three-step method:

First, start noticing when you fall into one of the habits.

Second, choose one better behavior to experiment with. For example, if you notice that you tend to speak conditionally, decide to speak more forcefully at the next meeting you attend by stating your viewpoints without apology.

Third, seek out an accountability partner who will give you feedback as you try out the new behavior.

​The more you experiment, the more you will gain confidence with the new behavior until it becomes a habit. The experts say that it takes us about a month to install a new habit, so be patient with yourself as you climb the learning curve.

Use this informational book as your guide to learning new behaviors, and watch your career and personal success flourish!

​Kristin Robertson is the Happy Mondays Coach, whose purpose is to ensure that your employees love to go to work on Monday mornings. She is certified by Human Synergistics to conduct both the Organizational Culture Indicator and Organizational Effectiveness Indicator, which have been used by thousands of companies to transform their culture. Her breadth of experience in culture transformation, leadership development and executive coaching make her the perfect partner for a company culture turn-around.

​Like it or not, the #MeToo movement has changed everything. Company executives can no longer leave their culture to chance or they may find their company featured in the news in the wrong way. Creating a positive, responsible culture that holds all team members accountable to the company’s values and standards of conduct is the best prevention of the abuses of power revealed by the #MeToo movement. In today’s atmosphere, all leaders must evaluate their organization’s culture and identify areas of vulnerability and potential problems. And evaluating your culture will also identify the strengths of your culture, from which you can build an even better one.

The good news is that you can objectively measure your company’s culture. The bad news is that not all so-called culture assessments truly measure it. Some of these assessments that purport to evaluate organizational culture are instead measuring the climate of the organization. To understand this, let’s start with definitions of organizational culture and organizational climate to help make this distinction.

Organizational Culture is a combination of values, beliefs, and behavioral norms (meaning the way a team member must behave to fit in). Values and beliefs are hard to measure. You may think that values are easy to perceive – after all, most companies have their values posted on the wall! To the contrary, what we are referencing are not the values that are declared but the actual values that are exemplified by the actions of the leaders and team members. Although most organizations espouse positive values, the way people actually behave can exemplify a different set of values. For example, a company may declare integrity to be a core value, but the best sales people pad their expense reports with a few personal purchases while management turns a blind eye. Beliefs, though truly invisible, are the foundation of any culture. An example of an organizational belief is “money is scarce, so we can’t take any risks with our money”. Certainly, actions can refer to beliefs, but it is very difficult to tease out the underlying beliefs of a company.

Yes, culture is challenging to measure. However, organizationalclimate, a term that is often confused with culture, is more easily assessed. Climate has to do with employee’s perceptions, attitudes, feelings and observations. Examples of climate measurements include employee job satisfaction surveys, employee net promoter scores (ENPS), engagement assessments, ratings of benefits and compensation, and surveys on ethical behavior. These opinion polls are very helpful; indeed, they provide a map for the journey towards a better culture. But don’t be confused into thinking they are measuring culture.

​How important is it to measure culture? Can’t we just measure organizational climate and get the same answers? Research shows that culture affects both the profitability of a company and the happiness of its employees, so, yes, it is important to measure culture. Culture endures and changes slowly, while organizational climate can change daily according to the opinions of your team members. Organizational climate surveys are fleeting glimpses of your people’s reactions to the latest company events. To know what kind of culture you have and if your change initiatives are making a difference, you need to measure your organizational culture. Benchmark your culture at first, then re-assess at yearly intervals to see how it is changing.

​At Brio Leadership, we offer a pair of instruments to measure both culture and climate. They are called the Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI) and the Organizational Effectiveness Inventory (OEI), created by Human Synergistics, a world-renowned company that specializes in measuring the effectiveness of an organization’s culture. Human Synergistics’s culture inventory asks participants to rate how often they observe certain behaviors that are needed to “fit in and meet expectations” within their organization. The instrument measures 12 behavioral types, which are grouped into three categories: Constructive styles, Passive/Defensive styles and Aggressive/Defensive styles. As you can imagine, higher ratings in the constructive styles are generally better but depending on the industry and the individual company, it may be valid to insist on some defensive behavioral styles. For example, a financial services company will need to comply with SEC regulations, so some conventional/conforming behaviors will be needed in the culture. A picture of a current culture versus the ideal culture, using the OCI, might look like this:

It’s exciting to see your culture measured so vividly in colors and styles, and to see the desired or ideal culture mapped out. We can help you map the journey between the current culture, on the left, to your ideal, desired culture, on the right.Would you like to measure your current culture and identify your desired culture? Message Brio Leadership here to learn more, or enroll in our upcoming webinar on You Must Evaluate your Culture in the #MeToo Era! on Tuesday, June 12, 2018 at 2:00 pm CDT.

Dallas HR Roundtable discussion, June 5, 11:30 to 1:00 at Dallas HR offices. The topic is “Culture Matters in the #MeToo Era”. Click here to learn more and to register.

Kristin Robertson is the Happy Mondays Coach! She is also CEO of Brio Leadership, a consulting and coaching firm that ensures your employees love to go to work on Monday morning. As a Company Culture Consultant and Executive Coach, Kristin conducts company culture audits, offers executive and group coaching to transform a culture. She is the author of Your Company Culture Ecosystem, available on Amazon, and the founder of the Happy Mondays Club. ​